“Miss Lamb.” A thin face shows from the shadows a few paces away. It’s pale as death, its eyes so dark they could be hollow. It moves toward me, a light flaring suddenly before it. I smell sulphur. “Here,” whispers the apparition. “Let me light your candle.” from “Lamb” by Kate Cary

The coachman is hunched in a gabardine. “Go knock,” he tells me. I look past him to the house. It looms, square and stone-faced, above me. Its small windows show no light, except a small leaded pane high above the great, dark front door. Shrinking from the stinging rain, I climb the stone steps and …

My landscape has changed. I have escaped tree-lined streets and smoke-stained towers and moved to a home where I can see the horizon. From my window I watch clouds tumble, and the trees keep a respectable distance, edging the far hills rather than pressing impatiently against my windows.